BRASIL

"In Morro da Garça, it was the week of the election of the 'queen of the fields' and the week of the yearly forró. The time of the village festival, the finest in all of Sertão des Minas. At dawn on the big day, we constructed a type of open-air studio using the tarpaulins of travelling vendors, in the middle of the village square. The mayor’s wife steered the candidates, one after the other, to our studio, as soon as they were ready for the parade.

In this way, a sample of country people, representative of this Brazilian 'pure mix' so dear to Stefan Zweig, filed in front of my camera lens. That evening, we also met Lia and her daughter Melane: one brunette like an Andalusian and the other blonde. Melane had been elected queen at the festival five years earlier and her pretty mother, a few years beforehand."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard